Nikki Jefford is a third generation Alaskan who loves fictional bad boys and heroines who kick butt. She is the author of the Spellbound Trilogy and upcoming Aurora Sky: Vampire Hunter series. Nikki married Sebastien, the love of her life, while working as a teaching assistant in France. They now reside in the not-so-tropical San Juan Islands, 70 miles northeast of Forks, Washington.
If fate were
kind the only thing I’d have to kill tonight is time.
Our
target home, one of two, had yet to draw their curtains, lighting the inside
like an aquarium as the last traces of daylight receded into the shadows.
The switch from
day to dusk happened in a matter of seconds, at least in Alaska, turning
everything black and white.
My tennis shoes
crunched over the salted walkway, grinding down pieces so big they felt like
small pebbles under my feet. Tennis shoes in winter—not really the best way to
keep my toes toasty. Neither was the short pleather jacket, but my parka and
winter boots felt too heavy on a mission.
There was no way our targets lived here. A vamp house with skylights…about as
likely as the red, white, and pink Valentine’s Day flag hanging off the
garage.
I
wanted to ram a dagger through the limp heart as I passed the stupid flag on the
march to the front door. Even if I didn’t eschew vandalism, I couldn’t have. Not
since Agent Melcher revoked my right to bear arms.
Melcher’s idea of easing Dante and I back into active duty came down to
assigning us each an informant/stand-in assassin. Our duty, our only
duty, tonight was to do the poisoning (i.e. get bit) then step aside and let our
partner go in for the kill.
“No
way, I’m all about follow up,” Dante said the moment he heard we were on
probation.
“You’re lucky we’re sending you back in the field,” Agent Crist had
snapped.
She
and Melcher weren’t very happy with how Dante’s “training” mission with me in
Fairbanks resulted in the death of an informant and human, followed by the
vampire Renard and his cohorts tracking us down in Anchorage. Of course, Dante
missed all that while the Natives in Kotzebue honored his slaying of a rabid
vampire with a blanket toss and an all-you-can-eat moose buffet. Dante returned
with a bear claw strung from a leather cord around his neck, puffed up like
Popeye on spinach until Agents Crist and Melcher lit into
him.
Melcher called the incident “too close for comfort.”
I
still didn’t see the harm in keeping a knife hidden in case things went south.
I’d been out of combat training for a week while I recovered from the multiple
stabbings Renard’s crony inflicted over my body.
Great way to start my second week at a new school.
Strep throat. That’s what Melcher’s doctor’s note
said.
More
like stabbed throat.
If we ended up
with the vamp house, I wouldn’t mind stepping aside and letting my
partner take the beating. To add insult to injury, Melcher assigned
Valerie to me and Noel to Dante.
We hadn’t spoken
since the moment we climbed inside Valerie’s red Honda
Civic.
Once our
addresses checked out we were free to part ways. The sooner the
better.
Two
nights ago, a pizza delivery boy headed out on his route and never returned. The
next morning a jogger found his body at Westchester Lagoon, naked and drained.
Melcher felt certain the culprit resided at one of the five homes on the boy’s
delivery route. When the police questioned them, every resident said they never
received their order. The manager at Midnight Pie confirmed that every household
on the route had called in to complain that their pizza never
arrived.
Dante and Noel were assigned three of the five addresses, Valerie and I the
remaining two. The manager at Midnight Pie could only guess which residence the
driver headed to first, though he believed the police’s theory that the boy had
been killed in a carjacking before ever reaching the first
home.
The
home in front of me did not emit evil. From ten feet away I saw a colorful
welcome mat and floral wreath on the door.
Valerie flipped her head from side to side, sending strawberry-brown waves over
the shoulders of her pea coat. She looked older without her usual wench’s
costume.
We
walked in sync, neither of us wanting to follow the other’s lead. As we bumped
shoulders to get to the porch, I spoke my first words. “There’s no way this is a
vamp house.”
“Could be a cover. You’d be surprised the lengths some vamps will go to hide
their activities. I’ve seen it all.” Valerie lifted her nose. “I’ve been doing
this a lot longer than you.”
“Congratulations,” I said, reaching for the doorbell.
Bing, bong.
A
woman in her late thirties came to the door smiling until she noticed the
pamphlet in my hand.
“Good evening,” I said cheerfully. “We’re here to talk to you about Christ our
Savior.”
“Oh,
umm. This really isn’t a good time. We’re about to eat.”
“Is
there a better time we could come back?” Valerie asked, suddenly all
smiles.
“Umm…”
My
relief at not stumbling upon a vamp house outweighed my embarrassment at
interrupting a family’s dinner with our phony
solicitation.
Valerie and I stared at the woman with twin smiles.
“I
don’t think so, but thanks for stopping by.” The woman quickly closed the
door.
“God
bless you,” Valerie said sweetly. She rolled her eyes the moment the door
slammed shut. “Maybe Dante and Noel are having better
luck.”
“They haven’t called,” I said, heading back to Valerie’s car.
She
quickly matched my strides, sprinting for the driver’s side as though we were
racing for it. At least Valerie respected the speed limit, unlike Dante.
Thinking about him made me snort. I had a hard time picturing him sitting back
while petite Noel rammed a knife in a vamp’s heart. Then again, he’d left me in
Fairbanks to do just that without even sticking around. That’s what had gotten
us into this mess to begin with.
The
Honda’s headlights slipped across the mailboxes in the next neighborhood. Porch
lights dotted the homes up and down the street. All but one house tucked back in
the shadows of the yard’s prickly spruce trees.
Valerie came to a stop along the curb, three houses from our last address. She
stuck her face in front of the review mirror and dabbed gloss on her rouged
lips.
I
might have kept my mouth shut but then she started rubbing and smacking her lips
together.
The
thought of those lips all over Fane’s made me want to shove the tube of gloss
down her throat. It was bad enough that she blackmailed me into breaking up with
him, but Valerie had taken it one step further, reinstating herself as Fane’s
bitch the moment I stepped aside…or so my source told me. Fane neither confirmed
nor denied this the last time we were together. I might have felt guilty over
the way it all went down if he hadn’t moved on so
quickly.
“We’re on a mission, not a date,” I snapped.
Valerie’s lips smacked as she gave her reflection one last pucker. She
shot me a sly look.
“Maybe I have a date afterwards.”
Turns out Melcher had been wise to ban me from carrying a weapon. The temptation
to do bodily harm to the vixen could strike me at any moment. Like right
now.
For
a brief second I hoped we’d get the vamp house. I wouldn’t mind watching Valerie
get roughed up a bit.
“You’re despicable,” I said.
Valerie smiled with her now shiny lips. “All’s fair in love and
war.”
“I
could report you to Melcher.”
Valerie smirked. “You wouldn’t risk it. You care about Fane too
much.”
“More than you, obviously.”
“Get
over yourself, Aurora. I’d never rat out Fane. We have too much…history.”
As
my fingers stretched down my leg, I had to remind myself yet again that I was
unarmed.
“You
dated him when you knew from the beginning it was forbidden,” I said. “I didn’t
realize he was a vampire until later.”
Valerie faced me. “You moved in on Fane when you knew he was taken.” Her words
dripped with scorn.
My
mouth opened and closed. She sorta had me there. I did kiss Fane on a public bus
when they were still together. Not that I could have known for sure. People
break up all the time in high school. It’s not like I kept tabs on my
classmates’ romantic status twenty-four seven. Besides, Fane followed me onto
the bus, not the other way around.
Valerie took my silence as acknowledgement of guilt.
“Nothing to say? That’s what I thought.”
I
yanked open the car door. “Let’s get this over with so we can go our separate
ways.”
Valerie slammed her door shut. Good thing we weren’t trying to sneak up on
anyone. She stormed down the sidewalk. Small wonder she slowed down when I did
in front of the house hidden behind a patch of spruce
trees.
A
set of fresh tire tracks led through the snow to a rusted Oldsmobile beneath the
carport.
I headed
straight for the plastic trash bin by the side of the car with Valerie hot on my
heels.
“What are you
doing?”
I didn’t answer
as I pulled the lid off the bin and placed it quietly on the ground. “Look,” I
said, nodding into the can.
The vamps hadn’t
even bothered covering the pizza boxes, a whole stack of them, with other
refuse. I lifted the cardboard cover.
Not even a slice
missing.
Valerie pushed
down the cardboard lid with a huff. “We’re not here to go through their trash.”
She shook her hair over her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
Before I could
respond, she charged towards the front porch. So Valerie was the jump in head
first kind of girl? Why wasn’t I surprised?
Valerie knocked
on the door.
Five seconds
later a young twenty-something man stuck his head out. His greasy hair reminded
me of the uneaten pizza sitting in the garbage can.
He didn’t say
anything, or maybe he didn’t have time.
“Do you believe
in Jesus?” Valerie demanded.
She leaned
forward with her whole body. Valerie didn’t have to put on an act—righteousness
came naturally to her.
The man looked
Valerie and I up and down, his lips forming a sneer. “Boy, did you chicks pick
the wrong house.”
I stepped
forward, waving my pamphlet in front of him. “I think we came to exactly the
right house. Are your parents home?”
He scoffed at
that. “I don’t have parents.”
“You live
alone?” Valerie demanded.
“Me and my two
roommates.”
Oh joy. Three
against two. And while Valerie’s personality might be toxic, her blood would be
no help knocking these creatures out. How the hell was I going to get three
vampires to feed on me at the same time? At least I was all juiced up from the
stabbing incident.
Calling for
backup would’ve been the smart move, but Valerie had already gotten up in the
vampire’s face.
“I bet you boys
could use some God in your lives.”
There’s no way
Valerie would want to share this bust. The excitement practically bounced off
her eyeballs.
“May we come in
for a few minutes?” I asked in my best impression of an authoritative voice. I
couldn’t have Valerie thinking I was some kind of chicken
shit.
The
greasy-haired vampire glanced over our shoulders into the dark yard. The bushy
spruce needles blocked out most of the neighbors.
“If you insist.”
He pulled back the door and motioned with his arm to come
inside.
Valerie and I
stepped forward, placing our first foot on the hardwood floor in
unison.
The entry led
directly into an open dining room. Two young men, vampires presumably, sat at
the table sorting through a mountain of mail. One had piercings in his ears,
nose, eyebrow, and chin. He shot me a menacing glare. “What the fuck is
this?”
The
doorman sniggered. “These young ladies from the church want to save
us.”
“We ain’t the
ones who need saving.”
I
lifted my chin. “I think you are.”
Pierced guy’s chair scraped the wood floor when he pushed back from the table.
His companion followed suit.
While it wasn’t
exactly wise to turn my back on my enemies, I didn’t want to trap myself between
the china hutch and dining table, either. I went for the living room, spinning
around in the center as though prepared to deliver a sermon rather than a battle
cry. The pamphlet I’d waved in Greasy Guy’s face at the front door crinkled in
my hand. If only I could use it to squish them like
flies.
Heavy curtains over the living room windows blocked out any passing cars. Good,
no witnesses.
Pierced dude and Greasy Guy followed closely behind me.
“Now, where were we?” I asked.
“You
were about to beg for your life,” the pierced vamp said.
His
tongue ring glinted as he spoke. It made a ‘fuck you, I eat silver for
breakfast’ kind of statement.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was about to save
you.”
The
lips on the pierced vamp drew back so far I could see his sharpened
molars.
Jackpot, I thought, right before the vampires closed in on
me.
“You
bitches came to the wrong house.”
Oh,
we were at the right house all right. The pamphlet fell from my fingers settling
by my feet on the hardwood floor. What did vampires have against carpeting? Or
heating? I had to hand it to them for practicality. Great way to save on the
electric bill and prevent bodies from decomposing too
quickly.
Silver Tongue socked me across the face. I had no time to duck. I’d been
expecting teeth not a fist. My face snapped sideways. Neck realignment would
have to wait until later.
I
dropped to the floor before the second blow connected with my jaw. Kneepads
would have been nice, I thought, as pain exploded through my leg joints. The
words “Jesus Loves You” looked up at me from the pamphlet, receding as Greasy
Guy hauled me up by the shoulders.
Not
ten minutes from here, Dante was preaching the gospel to some innocent household
waiting to see if they took the bait or shooed him away.
Naturally, I’d get the house with the vampires in it.
I
squirmed against the vampire holding me.
A
bloodcurdling scream ripped through the house followed by crashing
glass.
No surprise
Valerie screamed like a banshee. The third vampire staggered away from the china
hutch’s splintered glass. Valerie must have shoved him right through the wood
frame. She cupped her left eye in one hand and gripped her dagger in the
other.
I
elbow jabbed Greasy Guy when he turned his attention to the commotion. He
grunted but didn’t let go. His arms circled my chest to get a better hold. With
Silver Tongue approaching I had to do something, so I bit down on my captor’s
arm as hard as I could. He screamed and let go.
Take that, you homicidal, bloodsucking savage. Bet he wasn’t used to
getting bit.
I
spit his blood out on the floor. My second taste of vampire blood wasn’t any
better than the first. Two weeks ago, Renard force-fed me blood from his wrist.
Now that I’d tried it again, I could say there was definitely something off
about the taste of vampire blood.
Not like human
blood.
Silver Tongue
smiled. “I see the church still promotes violence.”
Before I could
answer, he had my arm in a bone-crushing grip. A yelp escaped my lips before I
could suppress it. Silver Tongue twisted harder.
Oh God, he was
going to break my arm. Just bite me, damn it!
Right before my
bones felt ready to snap, Greasy Guy yanked me away from Silver Tongue and
smacked me across the face. It stung but at least he didn’t
punch.
Before I could
land a blow of my own, he pushed me backwards toward Silver Tongue. The jerk
laughed and flung me back to his crony who mimicked his laughter and motion.
Back and forth they pushed me as though tossing a ball across the room. It
reminded me of a nature program I once saw of two killer whales playing with a
seal before they ate it.
The next time I
landed against Greasy Guy, I twisted around and dug my nails into his shoulder.
He stumbled as he tried to push me away. Before he had a chance to fight me off,
I bit straight through his t-shirt to the skin beneath.
“Shit!” he
screamed. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “So you like to bite, do
you?”
Without
preamble, he leaned forward and bit my neck.
Silver Tongue took me by the arm. “Better say your prayers,” he said into my
ear.
He
took my earlobe between his teeth and bit down. What started out as a pinch
turned into excruciating pain as his teeth pressed through my skin. What if he
tried to tear off my entire earlobe? I shrieked so loud I was convinced I would
have shattered the glass door on the china hutch if it weren’t already
broken.
Greasy Guy fell to the floor convulsing, but Silver Tongue didn’t notice. He
released my earlobe and covered his own ears while I screamed, then leaned back
in to bite my neck. I never saw him convulse.
“Motherfucker!” Valerie screamed right before she plunged her dagger in Silver
Tongue’s back.
He
fell forward, nearly taking me down with him.
Valerie held on tight to her knife. Once Silver Tongue hit the floor face first,
she pushed him onto his back with the heel of her boot. He looked dead, but that
didn’t stop Valerie from kicking him in the side.
The
greasy-haired guy twitched on the floor. His eyes widened as Valerie went for
him next.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” she yelled, once she finished him
off.
She
had a shiner around her left eye.
Even
though it hurt, the smile was worth it. “Better cancel that date, Val. You don’t
look so hot.”
